Andrew Montford on the Transformation of the Royal Society

Andrew Montford’s lucid account of the transformation of the UK Royal Society (here) starts with the 1753 “advertisement” to their journal, Philosophical Transactions:

…it is an established rule of the Society, to which they will always adhere, never to give their opinion as a Body upon any subject either of Nature or Art, that comes before them.”

It ends with the rueful worry of one of its fellows that an institution with such an eminent tradition has now become merely “another policy-driven quango”.

The role of recent presidents Robert May, Martin Rees and Paul Nurse comes in for special scrutiny. The latter two have been mentioned at CA on a couple of occasions. Rees acquiesced acquiesced in the University of East Anglia’s false claims that the papers examined by the Oxburgh panel had been selected by the Royal Society as representative of the issues in dispute – when in fact they were highly unrepresentative of CRU papers actually criticized at Climate Audit and had been selected by Trevor Davies of the University of East Anglia in a submission putting CRU in the best possible face.) Paul Nurse (as discussed in Montford’s paper) massively misrepresented the character and impact of FOI requests to East Anglia and has failed to respond to any requests for evidence supporting his untrue claims.

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As a graduate student and young post-doc I knew Robert May personally. He was quite famous within Ecology for his book Diversity and Stability in Model Ecosystems and has published in Nature & Science multiple times. He was brilliant and spoke even when extemporaneously in structured paragraphs (ie,not sloppy, no “um” or “er”). However, if you read his body of work, he draws conclusions directly from simplified models (all individuals identical, spatial heterogeneity ignored, assumption that all processes are known) to the real world, with very little reference to experiments or data that would confirm or perticularly refute his models. Sound familiar? He was involved with a colleague in the policy to cull cattle for BSE in UK rather than vaccinate them–a decision that cost farmers there dearly. So there is a clear bias to believe that idealized and quite simple models are real.

It seems almost unbelievable that all these organizations – NAS, AGU, Royal Society, Nature Editorial Staff, even CSICOP, to name a few – would abandon objectivity in favor of activism over something so nebulous and unsubstantiated as CAGW. Continental drift and the Bretz floods come to mind as examples where scientists closed ranks to block radical new ideas, but in those cases objectivity was lost in favor of sustaining the orthodoxy. Such high-level activism may truly be unprecedented in support of an extraordinary claim that challenges decades of orthodoxy, in this case about the coming and going of ice ages, the Holocene “optimum,” the MWP/LIA, etc.

Lord May and Robert May are the same person. It is interesting to read his whole contribution to the House of Lords debate on the 12th January 2012 about the FOIA. He seems to have supported two incompatible propositions:

1. That the protocol on science advice on policy making should be “”No more closed rooms. Everything open. We want to see it published” and then
2. That “the Freedom of Information Act has, as many of your Lordships will know, been used as a weapon of harassment in some circumstances” then referring to the CRU at UEA.

Whether the FOIA requests to the UEA constituted harassment or not, they would not have been necessary or happened if the CRU had published its data and code in accordance with the admirable principle he enunciates.

The full speech copied from Hansard is as follows:

“Lord May of Oxford: My Lords, I support the set of amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, and Amendment 148B, which the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has put down. I begin slightly narcissistically by saying that I think I have form in relation to openness. As Chief Scientific Adviser, I put in place the protocols for science advice on policy-making, which have gone through rounds of revision, saying “No more closed rooms. Everything open. We want to see it published”. I have been associated, and still am, with two of the three major journals in science-the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US and Science-in both cases promoting more open access within the framework of profit-making journals. More generally at the Royal Society, when I was its president I made our journals much more available, particularly to people in countries that could not afford to pay for them.

“I am all for making things available but, at the same time, I shall mention something which is perhaps tactless-if not even politically incorrect-which is that the Freedom of Information Act has, as many of your Lordships will know, been used as a weapon of harassment in some circumstances. The climate change community in general, and the community at the University of East Anglia in particular, have not only been subject to criminal invasion of their databases, carefully timed for particular events, but are continually bombarded with very elaborate requests for information that go well beyond the sharing of basic data, so we have to be careful in how we draft this.

“That brings me to two specific elements of the amendments suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill. On the suggestion that data should be provided in a format which the user requires, while I am sympathetic to the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, gave that it can be very inconvenient, on the other hand it invites the abuse of saying, “I want the data in some manner which is extraordinarily inconvenient”. This can be only partly protected by the other thing that I draw particular attention to: recognising that there is a cost associated with providing this data in any form and that it is only reasonable that people should be allowed to charge for it. I can see an offsetting, in some sense. If you allowed that people could request the form in which it be given, the offset would have to be really realistic. In some cases, that could reflect the degree of harassment and so on, so there are complexities nested within this.

“I also like Amendment 148B, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, simply because, like him, I could not understand what the provision meant.”

I wholly agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London. His words reminded me of the last sermon I got from the school padre on my last day at school. He said: “You’re all going out into this wonderful world. You will go in the company of a great and powerful God, but He has got very bored and tired of performing miracles to get you out of the messes you get yourselves into. Instead, He has given you all the materials you need to do it for yourselves. Now get out there and do it”.

Andrew Montford very clearly sets out the evidence for the perversion of the Royal Society into a quango. It’s beautifully documented, as well – I love the footnotes’ proximity to the actual text.

The Royal Society has had a role in advocating for certain scientific programs of practical significance to the government in its long past, but to my knowledge these were not accompanied by the ugly ideological divisiveness seen recently under Paul Nurse, and clearly presented by Montford here. I am thinking of its involvement in the search for a method of measuring longitude, or Sir Joseph Banks’s long presidency in the late 18th and early 19th century (he preferred practical science).

Andrew Montford’s analysis deserves a response from the membership of the Royal Society but I predict most scientists will just prefer to keep their heads down until the general political climate around this debate changes.

Andrew Montford’s analysis deserves a response from the membership of the Royal Society

Indeed it does. But herein lies the problem … perhaps if the membership, i.e. the Fellows, were given more of a voice, the RS would not be in the sorry position it is today.

My guess is that we are far more likely to see a “response” from the likes of Bob Ward (or one crafted by his replacement at the RS) than from the membership. FWIW, my thoughts on Andrew’s excellent analysis can be found at:

There goes another “independent” UK icon: the Royal Society. It follows in the foot steps of the BBC, having to toe the government line. Same problem: taking too much government money (40% of the “unrestricted” funds), so now at the mercy of the London bureaucracy and various ministers.

Just to confirm my point above about the BBC and RS being in it together under the blanket of the upper bureaucracy here is a quote from the Telegraph’s climate blogger James Delingpole:
“UPDATE
Here’s a copy of the mendacious letter the BBC Horizon producer Emma Jay sent to me when trying to arrange my stitch up by Paul Nurse:

Dear James
I hope you don’t mind me contacting you on this email address but I was given it by Louise Gray at the Telegraph.
I am making a film for BBC’s Horizon on public trust in science and I was hoping you may be able to help.
The film will explore our current relationship with science, whether we as a society do and should trust it. It is being presented by the nominated President of the Royal Society, Sir Paul Nurse. If he is voted in later this summer he will be taking over the at RS at the end of the year at around the same time the film will be transmitted so it would very much launch his presidency.”http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100136432/the-royal-society-is-a-joke/

They have certainly gone backwards from 1753. And, perhaps because I am an uncultured Australian, the appellation ‘noble’ in front of a mention of any member of the House of Lords in debate is faintly nauseating. Then again, in our own Parliament people are called ‘honourable’ – but that it at least an aspirational quality.

What Montford has done is to track the corruption of one of the great scientific bodies – brilliantly – but as Matt Skaggs has pointed out, the RS is not Robinson Crusoe. The co-option of these bodies worldwide perhaps suggests that they are reaching their use-by date, being wholly owned subsidiaries of prevailing political whims and the accompanying dollars and kudos.

So – will the RS and its equivalents around the world re-invent themselves? Will Steve and Ross be offered membership? Or will they be supplanted by loose alliances via the internet, such as already exist, that might form new bodies? As in 1753, the founding principle would have to be that no binding pronouncements may be made. In a sense, the blogrolls of ca, wuwt, tallbloke, judith curry etc already form the nucleus of a new Royal Society based on the original principles.

Andrew Montford quotes the Royal Society ‘advertisement’ to The Philosophical Transactions (1753):

“…it is an established rule of the Society, to which they will always adhere, never to give their opinion as a Body upon any subject either of Nature or Art, that comes before them.”

In 2010 I quoted Nature’s Mission Statement (1869) to its editor:

” . . . to place before the general public the grand results of scientific work and scientific discovery; . . . to aid scientific men . . . by giving early information of all advances made in any branch of natural knowledge throughout the world, and by affording them an opportunity of discussing the various scientific questions which arise from time to time.”

Such discrepancies between current practices and founding principles of research organizations suggest that the Climategate emails and documents were only the visible tip of a cancerous growth that had seriously compromised basic scientific principles for decades.

Steve, I’m reading Montford’s, as usual, perspicacious prose. He is probably one of the best writers on science around (you excepted – though why not a book of your own?). And what it provokes one to think is a more general ‘corruption’ in the west – the ‘corruption’ of thinking itself, of being able to think, to distinguish between a logical, discursive argument and mere ‘feeling’, between the passion to understand, enquire and listen and ‘mere’ passion itself. How superficial we have become! How absurd!

I agree with you that Andrew’s prose style really is lucid. I feel lucky that he took an interest in what I was doing. In turn, I’ve tried to learn from his style of presenting backstories.

I’m less pessimistic than you (or Andrew) about “corruption”. Yes, some of these things are frustrating, but lots of things in the world are frustrating. I try to focus on the intrinsic interest of each situation, whether it be proxies or FOI refusals.

Speaking about Proxies… Did you see the recent RC post regarding the 1258 earthquake as examined through proxies? There was a little chatter in there about verification statistics and such (in the comments too) .. it may picque your interest.

I’m less pessimistic than you (or Andrew) about “corruption”. Yes, some of these things are frustrating, but lots of things in the world are frustrating.

I’m not sure where Andrew stands but when I read something as broad brush as this from Lewis my agnosticism kicks in – some that didn’t know me might even call it my humility. For one thing we don’t know the impact of the internet on logical argument and discourse generally, as the next generation which has known nothing else reinvents these things. There are positives and negatives there and I have no idea which will win out. I also fall back on something that I read from Thomas Sowell, who tends to be of a pessimistic frame of mind. He suddenly said that his one hope is the vast number of past intellectuals he’s studied and how often their predictions were way off beam. So he too realises he may be quite wrong.

Sorry, Bernie. I was thinking “read” not necessarily review. Many years ago, I overcame my reluctance to read the 1920’s product of a Munich slammer – yah, the whole thing. Subsequently, It has made me less willing to take on works that I suspect i would hate, but would I hate HS Mike’s?? Hard to say.

I will read the book, but I am reluctant to review it if Andrew and Steve (or others more directly involved with Mann) are going to give their take. I write a fair number of reviews on a fairly broad range of books on Amazon as Observer most are well received. But I suspect that our host will provide much more insight.
Andrew Montford has just received his copy. When I posed the same question to Andrew, he replied saying that Mann’s book apparently does not mention or reference the Hockey Stick Illusion!!!! (This alone makes me feel that a detailed and critical review will add to the email evidence we already have as to the way Mann thinks.)

I’ve thought some more on it and will read the book. My career is behind me but in its 40 years, I never worked with anyone quite like the Mann we see in the emails and as portrayed at our favorite blogs. It could be that this was because i worked in an industry where you cannot successfully fool mother nature. Or it could be that our perception of him is inaccurate – make that my perception, based on my own reactions to what I’ve read here and there, and maybe different from the opinions of our gracious hosts, Steven, and Andrew.

Mann’s book apparently does not mention or reference the Hockey Stick Illusion!!!!

To my mind, this (amongst other characteristics of his prose, as highlighted by Tom Nelson) makes Mann nothing less than an eminent “revisionist scholar”. David Irving can be proud of the leaves Mann has taken from his books / mode of “doing history”.

The fact Mann doesn’t mention HSI greatly reduces my desire to read the book. Proper debate requires taking the most cogent statements of those with whom you disagree. I would be genuinely interested in seeing how Mann might counter Andrew’s book. But it’s the same old same old: ignore everything that’s inconvenient. I’ll leave it to others to wade through.

To understand what the RS is about, it is worth mentioning C P Snow’s 1951 novel, ‘The Masters’. It is about a struggle for power (and the Mastership) in a fictional Cambridge college. A key player is a chemist who wants, more than anything, to become a member of the RS, but is simply not good enough. Another theme is the fight between the sciences and the humanities for numbers and power in the college. For example, here is the narrator trying to cajole an ancient, vain, much rewarded and very distinguished Fellow who had built his career on studies of early Icelandic civilisation:

“Do you want a scientist as Master? Crawford’s field is a long way from yours” I said.

“I should never give a second’s thought to such a question” Gay rebuked me. “I have never attached any importance to boundary-lines between branches of learning. A man can do distinguished work in any, and we ought to have outgrown these arts and science controversies before we leave the school debating society. Indeed we ought.”

Snow wrote extensively about the conflict between the arts and the sciences in academia and politics, and had a brief flush of fame for it (The Two Cultures).

It is arguable which has won, but there is no doubt that the sciences have gained firepower by borrowing from acquiescent bits of the arts, such as politics and economics. It does seem that Professor Gay, and the distinguished physicist who eventually became the Master (who was as incorruptible as Robespierre) would not recognise the academic landscape of today. If they were as described in the book, both would have resigned from the Royal Society.

Johanna:
I read CP Snow’s Strangers and Brothers many years ago and agree it is a pretty good anthropological/sociological analysis. More telling though is a book that I may have referenced here before by David and Steven Clark – Newton’s Tyranny: The Suppressed Scientific Discoveries of Stephen Gray and John Flamsteed
I spent my professional life studying organizations and while it is certainly the case that organizational structures influence behavior and the visible leaders can set a tone, most behavior reflects the behavior and attitudes of certain key individuals. While recent presidents may deserve criticism – I would look for the Sir Humphrey type characters who are ensuring that an open debate on the way climate science is being conducted is suppressed.
P.S. I have just downloaded Andrew’s new essay and look forward to sifting through it.

One of the most relevant books is “The Apocalyptics” by Edith Efron, Simon & Schuster NY (1984) ISBN 0-671-41743-6.

The author used only direct quotes from the large number of players invloved in the now-disproved hypothesis that a massive outbreak of cancers would result from the use of synthetic chemicals by mankind. There are no references from industry, for fear they might be tainted. The 589 paperback pages are meticulously researched.

The parallel with Golbal Warming is immediate and relevant. Even some of the players are the same; only the cause has changed.

The book is motivational, since it shows that skill and persistence by a small number of gifted individuals can change the establishment view, to peoduce a better result for those who follow us.

There was a turning point when Bruce Ames, who could loosely be equated with James Hansen in the plot, realised he had been wrong. Later, he wrote extensivelt on how wrong he had been. Here is a part of a popular summary:

“Don’t smoke and eat your fruits and veggies.” If you ask Bruce Ames, that simple, folksy remedy is the best way to avoid cancer.

So why is this 63-year-old professor of biology at the University of California, Berkeley, so controversial?

Ames burst on the national scientific scene in the early 1970s with the development of a method, generally dubbed the Ames Test or the Ames Mutagenicity Test, to determine what chemicals caused a certain bacteria to mutate.

This, in turn, could be used to help determine what chemicals cause cancer.

Bruce Ames

Ames is the recipient of the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Prize and of the Tyler Prize for environmental achievement. He has served on the National Cancer Institute board of Bruce Ames directors, and he’s a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

At one time, he was the darling of the environmental movement. But now, the members of that movement have turned on him with a vengeance, accusing him of aiding and abetting “Corporate America,” although he accepts no money other than his university salary.

Ames’ problem is that after he discovered that there were a vast number of synthetic chemicals that are carcinogenic – that is, they cause cancer when fed to laboratory animals at extremely high doses – he then discovered that natural chemicals found in everyday food are just as likely to be carcinogenic as those manufactured by Dow, Uniroyal or American Cyanamid.

This, he found, was a very politically incorrect conclusion.

The environmentalist activists, Ames said recently, “have a religion” that says that corporations are behind an exploding epidemic of cancer.

Prodded by a tiny handful of doctors, such as Samuel Epstein of the University of Illinois at Chicago, by a media looking for headlines, and by celebrity spokespeople such as Jane Fonda and Meryl Streep, Americans, Ames says, are engaged in a veritable witch hunt against synthetically produced chemicals and the companies that make them.

Interesting one, Geoff
I posted at Bishop Hill earlier today:- I have just been re-reading Anthony Browne’s “The Retreat of Reason” which charts the development of Political Correctness. Interestingly his introduction deals with the ‘myth of heterosexual AIDS’.
The parallel with global warming (which as I recall he doesn’t actually mention in the book) is as plain as it could be just about from page 1!

Andrew Montford has articulated well here a message that goes well beyond The Royal Society. I have surmised that he intended for the warnings he presents to be applied to all quasi-private organizations interested in science. Nothing evil just that we reap what we sow.

Those interested in following matthu’s excerpts from the January 2010 debate in the House of Lords may notice that, according to Hansard, Oxburgh failed to declare his financial interests when intervening in that debate although, when he came to advocating carbon capture, he did mention his involvement as the honorary president of the Carbon Capture & Storage Association.

For the record the following extract from The Record shows what he could, and most of believe that he should, have declared.

“…Oxburgh is also a director of GLOBE, the Global Legislators Organisation for a Balanced Environment.

GLOBE may be too obscure to merit its own Wikipedia entry, but that belies its wealth and influence. It funds meetings for parliamentarians worldwide with an interest in climate change, and prior to the Copenhagen Summit GLOBE issued guidelines (pdf) for legislators. Little expense is spared: in one year alone, one peer – Lord Michael Jay of Ewelme – enjoyed seven club class flights and hotel accommodation, at GLOBE’s expense. There’s no greater love a Parliamentarian can give to the global warming cause. And in return, Globe lists Oxburgh as one of 23 key legislators.
…

In the House of Lords Register of Lords’ Interests, Oxburgh lists under remunerated directorships his chairmanship of Falck Renewables, and chairmanship of Blue NG, a renewable power company. (Oxburgh holds no shares in Falck Renewables, and serves as a non-exec chairman.) He also declares that he is an advisor to Climate Change Capital, to the Low Carbon Initiative, Evo-Electric, Fujitsu, and an environmental advisor to Deutsche Bank.”

Deutsche Bank 2008 Annual report (and also 2009, though 2008 was definitely before Climategate emails Part 1).
Members of the Climate Change Advisory Board
Lord Browne, Managing Director and Managing Partner (Europe), Riverstone
Holdings LLC and former CEO of BP
John Coomber, Member of the Board of Directors, Swiss Re and Chairman, The
Climate Group
Fabio Feldmann, CEO, Fabio Feldmann Consultores and former Executive
Secretary, Brazilian Forum on Climate Change
Amory B. Lovins, Chairman and Chief Sientist, Rocky Mountain Institute
Lord Oxburgh, Member of the Advisory Board, Climate Change Capital and Former
Chairman of Shell
Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, CBE, Founding Director of Potsdam
Institut for Climate Impact Research
Professor Robert Socolow, Co-Director, The Carbon Mitigation Initiative and
Professor, Princeton University
Professor Klaus Töpfer, Former Minister for Environment, Germany
Professor Hongren Zhang, Former President, International Union of Geological
Science and former Vice Minister of Geology and Mineral Resources.
I found it interesting to search H-J S, now Potsdam Institute, in the full Climategate set. You might too, especially re Tyndall Centre. Indeed, all of them are interesting in their various ways, some by contributing vast big oil $$$ to skeptics.(/sarc)

I find it fascinating that NAS, AGU, Royal Society, Nature Editorial Staff, etc could somehow in almost group think style all begin to become more activist in nature rather than more objective in nature. Not sure how that transition occurs in large organizations…